Interwar period

The puppet theatres of Kazakhstan combined Soviet ideals with Kazakh traditions to educate the masses.

Entrepreneur Hugh Donald McIntosh struck white gold when London’s Black and White Bar opened on 1 August 1935.

Britain’s dearth of Afghan informants provided an opportunity for a disinherited Indian prince and his son to present themselves as an authentic conduit to the Muslim world. Soon they were advising the nation on subjects from geopolitics to the powers of the occult.

At the outset of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference Japan enjoyed a seat at the top table, but the vexed issue of racial equality set it and its notional Western allies on different paths.

When a priceless altarpiece was stolen from a Belgian cathedral it sparked a 90-year hunt. The crime remains unsolved.

When the English and Nazi German football teams met for the first time on British soil in 1935, the game was not the headline.

The Loch Ness Monster’s first appearance on film captured both the hype and the scepticism surrounding cinema’s newest star.

Cita Stelzer’s Churchill’s American Network and David Reynolds’ Mirrors of Greatness seek to bring Churchill’s contemporaries and adversaries out of his shadow.

What are stars made of? When a young astronomer upset standard explanations for the formation of the solar system, the establishment told her she was wrong – then stole her findings.

Just two countries supported the Republic during the Spanish Civil War: the Soviet Union and Mexico. While Soviet help came with strings attached, Mexico’s reflected the country’s contentious relationship with its old colonial master.